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corona_wind

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Posts posted by corona_wind

  1. On 5/28/2020 at 9:13 AM, SaintHog said:

    On programmer (v1.0.8), there is a possibility to exploit missions with bio barrel delivery for infinite gold by sending the same (succesful) drone again and again. Every barrel i deliver gives me 25 gold for infinity. It would be sweet if every extra barrel after finishing a planet's mission would give one less gold. By that even patient people couldn't get more gold after delivering 25 barrels. Or just stop rewarding barrles after the mission is done in general.

    How do you even manage to deliver bio barrels as programmer?  Those planets are so heavily guarded by turrets and wildlife I ground to a halt there

  2. 4 hours ago, Konchog said:

    So when the resource is buried under a load of terrain, how does your magic engine get it? Or do you just spam terrain eaters, which is what I currently do?

    Coping with drone brains on the order of a Solarbotics kit, you have to take what you can get.  Many things are going to be impossible until complex logic is implemented, and even then, much will still be difficult.

    With enough speed and luck, these rollers can explore a large portion of planets with tunnels to the core (to the point I use them for core hammerhead missions).  Sometimes I use timed boosters to aim them specifically at certain lodes.

  3. On 4/10/2020 at 5:56 PM, Konchog said:

    Basically, I cannot quite see how to build an autonomous mining drone.  

    2 sensors, 2 engines.

    GlbQW99.gif

    What tells it where to aim?  Absolutely nothing.  What tells it when to mine?  Absolutely nothing.

  4. OK.  This is by no means n exhaustive list, but covers a lot of basics.  Subject to possible change in the future, tested as of Apr 10, 2020.

    MsSGVSs.png?1

    Enemies:  Bees, turrets, etc.  It seems to exclude passive creatures like purple blobs.

    Enemy structures:  I know this includes hives.  It probably includes a lot more.

    Obstacles:  Purple blobs, scrap, the Nimbatus, and the bucket.

    Collectable items:  Cargo containers, black boxes, the alien artifact, etc.  Probably situational.

    Own drone:  You get three guesses, and the first two don't count.

    Resources:  Ore and nothing but ore so far.

    Projectiles:  This detects enemy projectiles, including acid bee puke and corporate guns.

    Mission Target:  This one is situational.  In artifact missions, it responds to burned-out statues.  In corporate lab missions, it responds to shield generators and the lab.  In hammerhead missions, it responds to hammerheads.  Et cetera.

    It's especially helpful to use "mission target" with a direction indicator, because it changes!  Light one dead statue, and it will direct you to the next one.  Light the last statue, and it will point you to the artifact.  Blow up one shield generator, and it'll point you to the next.

     

    Things I haven't tested:  Laser bees, hot and cold planet enemies, those weird glowy rocks of unknown purpose, meteors, funky meteors, lots of corporate hardware, etc.

  5. We've seen each others' awesomest creations, now let's share our most spectacular mistakes.

    Keep in mind these ones of mine are all fully automatic drones!

    udKjf77.gif

    ...it just vaporized...

    c84m9qG.gif

    "What's understeering?"  *points to image*

    "Oh.  What's oversteering?"  *points to image, again*

    "Oh.  What's windup?"  *points to image a third time*

    jV0VBew.gif

    It is persistent, at least...

    o8vHk8z.gif

    "Jitters a little in the lab, but how bad can it be?"

    TkR7rji.gif

    Why are you going UNDER the bucket? NOOOOOO!

    Nnu8Uaf.gif

    A failure to eject.

    7dAQG0f.gif

    These critters don't give up!  I waited 20 minutes!

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  6. When a new design hits every wall and still crosses finish seconds faster than my last best, that's a good sign.  I refined it into this.

    S6Oshtq.gif

    Technically a very very short dragger, the dragger part does the fine steering, and the back engines only do very very rough steering to avoid walls or make especially tight turns.  (Plus a few more logic tricks.)  This means the back 4 engines spend nearly all their time active.

    33.6 seconds on Cygnus.  Still has issues with deceleration pads and can't finish other courses.

    [edit] 33.5!  Top 20!

    • Like 1
  7. My favourite designs have a kind of callous simplicity.  "That's right, I beat your design with three engines and a dead weasel."  They do a lot with minimum parts.  This is why rotary designs make me happy.

    cbbyuWX.gif

    Four engines and a direction indicator can race.

    GlbQW99.gif

    Two engines and two wall-sensors can climb and mine.

    And they're really fun to watch.

    climbing-spinner.gif

    Take a close look at what's happening.  Each sensor drives the OPPOSITE engine, carrying it around, making the far side spin up and around and hammer to the wall -- just in time to switch to the other one.

    climbing-spinner.png

    Direction sensors do exactly the same thing, in midair.  By changing the angle of the indicator, you can make it follow the target, flee it, or track a right-angle to it (something VTOLs cannot do).

    You can mirror them without breaking them.  You never need to worry about turning, because they are always turning.  You only need one mining tool to cover all directions.  Et cetera.

    Their biggest drawback, is they don't lend themselves to large designs.  The racer is about as big as they can go.  But you can pack along something larger in a factory to launch later.

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  8. Direction indicator trick:  Lock-on signal.

    locked-dir.png

    The inverter is set with "!LOCKED" as input, and "LOCKED" as output.

    locked-dir.gif

    Now the direction indicator can tell you when its dead-on.

    Bonus:  Using a NOR gate instead of an inverter, gives you a free logic input which will disable the "LOCKED" signal whenever you want.

    • Like 2
  9. Oh, and lastly:  AND/OR gates are not universal.  Because they can't invert, you can't build all possible machines from them.

    NOR gates are universal.  You can build anything out of them, including AND logic.

    So are NAND, but they don't get the full benefit of 4 inputs the way NOR does.  (And NOR gates cannot be piled up to make bigger NOR gates the way NAND can.)

     

  10. And what good is a NOR gate?  It's helpful to think of them as "disable gates".  If any of the inputs are true, turn this off!  Do not ask "what engine do I turn on for this sensor?"  Ask "what engine do I turn off for this sensor?"  etc.  And anywhere you want to put an inverter, put a NOR gate instead.  You'll thank yourself later, when you find any reason you want to inhibit that signal.

    ZyepT2L.png

    This drone completes the "retrieve alien artifact" mission and has loads of different behaviours.  I select between them by abusing extra NOR gate inputs.  Inhibit all nor gates except these ones...  Then, inhibit all nor gates except *those* ones...  And at the end, I turn off all engines with the KILL signal, letting it fall right back into the bucket and carry the prize with it.

  11. I don't think its possible.  It's not a matter of how tags work -- it's how gates work in general.  Pile up two gates with the same outputs, the game or's them.  Changing that behaviour would mean needing a whole new logic engine.

    HOWEVER!

    Invert your logic and what you're imagining is already possible.

    I use primarily nor-gate logic.  With tags+keys, they work just great as 4-input nor gates, which makes them by far the most space-efficient gate in Nimbatus.

    It's also possible to build a 4-input NAND with 2 gates instead of 3.  Just assign the same key as output and it works.  Plot out the logic of (A NAND B) OR (C NAND D) and you'll see it's identical to (A NAND B NAND C NAND D).

  12. Programmer mode artifact retrieval!

    42FnqCd.gif

    ...and the mass of gates powering it is easily as big as the entire rest of the thing.

    ZyepT2L.png

    This was hard!  Seven sensors in this thing.

    Distance sensors, right to left:

    1) MissionTarget.  Detects torches to activate the plasma gun.  Also the artifact, unfortunately.

    2) Collectible Items.  Disables the gun.  "Don't shoot at the priceless artifact, moron."

    3) Collectible items, again.  Tells when it's in the right place to be towed and activates magnet.

    Direction sensors, clockwise from top right:

    1) Mission target.  Directs the drone horizontally across the landscape until it's straight over a target, then precision-drops.

    2) Gravity.  keeps  drone upright.

    3) Container.  Sends the drone back home to the container, plus some tilt so it doesn't actually hit the container.

    4) Drone core.  Tells it when it's right above the bucket, forcing it to disable all engines.

    And the altimeter, to give it a reference altitude to flee to whenever it hasn't found a target yet.

    The musical instruments are debugging.  A low tone when it's towing, a high tone when it's found the bucket.

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